Is America Going Crazy?

It may seem like Americans are crazier than ever but in fact we’re just as nutty as we’ve always been.

We’re living in a post-truth world, where reality and rhetoric are increasingly divorced. Conspiracy theories are rampant and nobody trusts their neighbors. Or so we’ve been told repeatedly over the last few years. America has lost its mind, is going crazy, and has never been more divided. Don’t worry, we’re not going through an especially acute episode of craziness. American history is replete with political psychosis and social hysteria, the calm periods are the aberration. We’re merely reverting to type or, more accurately, the curtains have been permanently opened, largely by the internet and social media, for all the neighbors to see.

Courtesy of Silimtao

From the religious zealots who helped found this country to the xenophobes and pseudo-socialists in today’s Republican and Democratic parties respectively, there has always been a tendency to look for complicated, nefarious grand schemes operated against ‘real Americans’ by some shadowy group. There has always been someone out to get us and, because we’re the country that gave the world Ghost Hunter as a profession and TV show, some intrepid patriots have always tried to expose the ‘Truth.’